×
INTELLIGENT WORK FORUMS
FOR ENGINEERING PROFESSIONALS

Log In

Come Join Us!

Are you an
Engineering professional?
Join Eng-Tips Forums!
  • Talk With Other Members
  • Be Notified Of Responses
    To Your Posts
  • Keyword Search
  • One-Click Access To Your
    Favorite Forums
  • Automated Signatures
    On Your Posts
  • Best Of All, It's Free!
  • Students Click Here

*Eng-Tips's functionality depends on members receiving e-mail. By joining you are opting in to receive e-mail.

Posting Guidelines

Promoting, selling, recruiting, coursework and thesis posting is forbidden.

Students Click Here

Jobs

Earthquake design procedure of rammed houses

Earthquake design procedure of rammed houses

Earthquake design procedure of rammed houses

(OP)
Hello,
I have been looking for a procedure about earthquake resistant design of rammed earth house in some codes, such as UBC,EC but could not find an adequte procedure. If anyone knows such an procedure and let me know it, I will appreciate...

best regards,

Ahmet Anýl Dindar

RE: Earthquake design procedure of rammed houses

This ought to be an interesting thread!

My brother-in-law recently built his house with rammed earth in central California (in the City of Nipomo). To comply with the Uniform Building Code, and to satisfy the local building inspector, the house was constructed with concrete columns attached to a continuous grade beam below the walls and a continuous concrete bond beam on the top of the walls. The design analysis assumed absolutely no strength in the rammed earth walls themselves and depended completely upon the lateral strength of the concrete columns.

Because of the concrete columns, the construction sequence was actually made easier. Re-useable formwork was constructed for one wall panel. Half-sections of PVC pipe were fixed to the formwork to produce concrete keys that serve to "lock in " the wall panel. This formwork was re-used to construct all the wall panels. Once the wall panels were in place, the walls themselves served in part as the formwork for placing concrete for the columns and bond beam.

As far as building code design basis, the rammed earth wall panel would be catagorized as an "un-reinforced wall panel" which is not presently recognized for either lateral load carrying strength or for load bearing strength.

If anyone is interested in persuing code approval for such construction without the use of concrete columns, then it would be neccessary to put up a large sum of money to do run lab tests to gain ICBO approval. Yes, it is quite possible that rammed earth has potential as a "building material", but I would think that a little research and development would be necessary to iron out the details, such as, adhesive additives to increase strength, etc.

Concrete looks ugly, but I think my brother-in-law is satisfied with the result.

Red Flag This Post

Please let us know here why this post is inappropriate. Reasons such as off-topic, duplicates, flames, illegal, vulgar, or students posting their homework.

Red Flag Submitted

Thank you for helping keep Eng-Tips Forums free from inappropriate posts.
The Eng-Tips staff will check this out and take appropriate action.

Reply To This Thread

Posting in the Eng-Tips forums is a member-only feature.

Click Here to join Eng-Tips and talk with other members!


Resources